Excerpt of op-ed by Omar Hilmi Al-Ghoul, regular columnist for the official PA daily

“The 29th of November has a special significance in the life of the Palestinian people as it brought us bitterness, pain, and tragedy in 1947, when the UN adopted international Resolution 181 (i.e., the UN partition plan) which allowed the establishment of the Israeli uprooting colonialist state, which uproots, expels, and displaces, on 56.74% of the territories of historical Palestine… thus it brought it after 30 years, also a sort of apology to the Palestinian people, when the [UN] General Assembly voted in 1977 on international Resolution 32/40 B, which determines that Nov. 29 every year is the international day of solidarity with [the Palestinian people]…

Perhaps we will demand to again require the implementation of UN Resolution 181 from 1947 – the decision on the basis of which the State of Israel arose – and stop championing the borders of June 4, 1967. This is while guaranteeing the right of return to the Palestinian refugees based on international [UN] Resolution 194 that links the return of the refugees with the recognition of the State of Israel. The time has come to implement a policy of political attack.

I hope that the speech of [PA President] Mahmoud Abbas at the opening of the discussions at the Seventh Fatah Conference today will adopt this option, in addition to prosecuting Britain over its ominous promise (i.e., the Balfour Declaration), in order to defend the national rights and interests."

The Balfour Declaration of Nov. 2, 1917 was a letter from British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour to Baron Rothschild stating that “His Majesty's government views with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people” and is seen as the basis for later international commitments to establish the State of Israel.

UN resolution 194 (Chapter 11, Dec. 11, 1948) states that "the refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbors should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return." Palestinian leaders argue this means that all Arabs who left Israel during the war (hundreds of thousands) and their descendants (a few million) have a "right of return" to Israel. Israel argues that the resolution only calls for a limited return and only under certain conditions, especially focusing on the words "wishing to return... and live at peace with their neighbors."